Showing posts with label Showmen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Showmen. Show all posts

Wednesday, 13 June 2018

Aerobatic/Racing Aircraft. One.

New Concepts?

Older ideas from the bi-plane era and smaller lighter material has moved us away from agricultural spraying to aerobatic displays and racing. Now some of these bi-planes did put on shows back in the 1920' to 40's in the various showmen and stunt shows, but they seemed to have died out with the introduction of the jet age in the 1950's, when speed was all the new thing-craze?

But in recent years there has been a demand for air racing and many successful light training aircraft have been super-charged to meet this demand. Thus so has stunt flying returned and aerobatic displays, we will not cover the types of aircraft in this blog because there are so many!

That will be something for you to check out for yourself, meanwhile there are also many other machines, home or kit builds that meet the requirement of Micro-lights that too are meeting this new demand, Gyro-copters are coming back into the airshows around the world.

Thursday, 7 November 2013

Caravaning.

(Please note update on space on the space page this week).

The Caravan.

The caravan is essentially just a wagon that is towed behind a automobile/car or truck and has no real motive power of its own. Yet it is one of the biggest business pullers across the globe both in N-America and Europe.

Caravaning took off in the United Kingdom in the 1920's and up to 1960, one could park anywhere and enjoy the view. But today we have Caravan sites and trailer parks, unless you are part of the travelling showman circut. 

The temporay home on wheels has progressed from a wooden box with basic facilities to the present state of the art mobile homes. With everything now from power shower to sat nav, microwave cooking to solar panel powered.

Even comforts that are better than we have in our houses and heating systems. But despite all these wonderful things, accidents in towing from A to Z remain a problem.

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Mobile homes.

Also known as camper vans. 

There are two roads to how these vehicles came about.

1. Travelling communities across the world, Circus's, Showmen, (Fun Fairs/Fairground attractions), moved from their horse drawn waggon's and houses to the steam engines and then on to the motorised versions.

2. The 1920's saw the rise in Caravaning craze in the UK and after World-War-II (1939-45), the Camper van came in to an easy tourer. 

In the 1960's the German Volks Wagen VW camper was associated with the 'Hippie movement and Woodstock'.
It became the iconic vehicle of young people travelling around and it remains so to this day in Europe anyway.
 
Today there are quite a varied selection of vehicles on the market. In the U.S. the Winnebago is probably the largest mobile home. Many people have over the years converted trucks and buses, coaches to live in.